MATH 220 Writing Assignment
Fall 2014
The following is a list of possible topics. Feel free to choose another topic as long as you check with
me first to be sure the topic is suitable. You must tell me what your topic is by Tuesday, 4 March 2014.
You must each do a different topic with topics picked on a first come/first served basis.
1. The golden ratio
2. Fibonacci numbers
3. Pascal’s Triangle and its applications
4. Error-correcting codes, especially linear or matrix codes
5. The pigeonhole principle
6. The Tower of Hanoi
7. Euler Characteristic
8. The five color problem (All planar graphs can be colored using at most Five colors so that no two
countries with a common borderline have the same color. Actually four colors are enough but that
is beyond this course.)
9. The Königsberg bridge problem (or Eulerian Circuits).
10. Sphere packing problem (Kepler’s conjecture).
11. Latin squares (note: latin squares were first used in agricultural experiments)
12. Infinity (Hilbert’s discussion of the ”Grand Hotel” is a good starting point for this topic)
13. Ciphers or cryptography (secret codes)
14. Game theory and the prisoner’s dilemma
15. Platonic solids
16. Crystal structures and symmetry
17. Tilings (e.g., the chess problem of the knights)
18. Knots and braids
19. Little Fermat’s theorem and RSA codes
20. Democratic elections and Arrow theorem
21. Finite automata (including the game Life)
22. Göedel incompleteness theorem
Feel free to choose another topic as long as you check with me first to be sure the
topic is suitable For example:
23. A major theorem (e.g. Fermat’s Last Theorem)
24. A problem that remains unsolved but has led to substantial mathematical activity (e.g. the Riemann
Hypothesis)
25. An important mathematical concept (e.g. the axiom of choice)).
26. Proofs of impossibility (e.g. equations of 5th order, classical Greek problems)
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